Monday, May 03, 2010

An Important Auction

Over on LiveJournal, there is currently an auction running to raise money for Deb Mensinger, the wife of my friend and fellow-fantasy-author Laurie J. Marks. Deb needs a liver transplant, and although she has health insurance, it doesn't cover all of the costs of the procedure. Thus folks in the writing, art, and LJ communities are rallying around to raise some urgently needed cash.

I've donated the painting above ("Mr. Fox," an English trickster figure), and other folks have donated items as well. Ellen Kushner, for example, has donated a copy of the beautiful book pictured below, a limited-edition, small press volume with illustrations by Thomas Canty. New auction items are being added daily. The auction runs until May 23.

Here are the ways you can help:

1. By bidding on something. (All donations are being run through a women's health charity, and are tax deductible.)

2. By donating something (a piece of art or craftwork, a signed book, etc.) to the auction. Anyone can donate; you don't have to know Deb & Laurie personally in order to help out.

3. By spreading word of the auction through your own blog or Facebook page.

4. By buying Laurie's books. You'll be glad you did. The writing in her "Elemental Logic" series bears comparison to Le Guin's "Earthsea" series, and that's high praise from me indeed. (To sample Laurie's work, you can read her selchie story "How the Ocean Loved Margie" online in The Journal of Mythic Artsarchive.)

Please note: You do need
to have a LiveJournal account to bid or donate something. It's easy to register on LJ, and it's entirely free. If, however, you don't want to register on LJ but you'd still like to bid or donate to auction, you can do so by writing
to Jude, the auction organizer: dziwozony [at] gmail.com

God, how I hate the U.S. health care system. I'm very grateful to live in England, where an auction like this would be entirely unnecessary. (Friends over here find the need for it absolutely barbaric.) I'm also grateful to the writing-and-reading community for helping Deb to get the life-saving care she needs.

Comments

An Important Auction

Over on LiveJournal, there is currently an auction running to raise money for Deb Mensinger, the wife of my friend and fellow-fantasy-author Laurie J. Marks. Deb needs a liver transplant, and although she has health insurance, it doesn't cover all of the costs of the procedure. Thus folks in the writing, art, and LJ communities are rallying around to raise some urgently needed cash.

I've donated the painting above ("Mr. Fox," an English trickster figure), and other folks have donated items as well. Ellen Kushner, for example, has donated a copy of the beautiful book pictured below, a limited-edition, small press volume with illustrations by Thomas Canty. New auction items are being added daily. The auction runs until May 23.

Here are the ways you can help:

1. By bidding on something. (All donations are being run through a women's health charity, and are tax deductible.)

2. By donating something (a piece of art or craftwork, a signed book, etc.) to the auction. Anyone can donate; you don't have to know Deb & Laurie personally in order to help out.

3. By spreading word of the auction through your own blog or Facebook page.

4. By buying Laurie's books. You'll be glad you did. The writing in her "Elemental Logic" series bears comparison to Le Guin's "Earthsea" series, and that's high praise from me indeed. (To sample Laurie's work, you can read her selchie story "How the Ocean Loved Margie" online in The Journal of Mythic Artsarchive.)

Please note: You do need
to have a LiveJournal account to bid or donate something. It's easy to register on LJ, and it's entirely free. If, however, you don't want to register on LJ but you'd still like to bid or donate to auction, you can do so by writing
to Jude, the auction organizer: dziwozony [at] gmail.com

God, how I hate the U.S. health care system. I'm very grateful to live in England, where an auction like this would be entirely unnecessary. (Friends over here find the need for it absolutely barbaric.) I'm also grateful to the writing-and-reading community for helping Deb to get the life-saving care she needs.

Myth & Moor

by Terri Windling

I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts. I workin the New York publishing industry but I live in aDevon village at the edgeof Dartmoor with my English husband, dramatist & puppeteer Howard Gayton, our daughter, Victoria Windling-Gayton, and a joyful hound named Tilly (a Springer Spaniel/Labrador cross).

The 37th International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts: I'm delighted to be Guest of Honor in 2016 along with writer Holly Black and fairy tale scholar Cristina Bacchilega. ICFA is held annually in Orlando, Florida in March. Further information on the 37th conference will be posted soon.

Other events in 2016 are still being confirmed, so please check back.

Take a stroll through our village (and its environs) by visiting my neighbors' blogs & sites:

"As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth...the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times." - Gary Snyder

"People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand - what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for - Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.” - Terry Tempest Williams

"This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories." - Ben Okri

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion." - Barry Lopez

Bookshelf

The Wood Wife:A mythic novel set in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. This link goes to the US edition; a UK edition is available here; and the new French edition is here. (For those who might be interested, I did a Q-&-A session on the book over on the Good Reads site.) Winner of the Mythopoeic Award.

Welcome to Bordertown:The latest volume in a classic Urban Fantasy series for YA readers. (An Audie Award nominee, for the audio book edition.) For information on the previous books, visit the Bordertown website.)

All told, I've published over forty books for children, teenagers and adults. More information on my writing, editing, and art can be found on my website.

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Please note that these books are linked to Amazon because it's the only book linking system that Typepad (this blogging service) has,but I urge you to please support your local bookstore if you plan to purchase any of the books mentioned on this blog.

Links to:

The Endicott StudioThe nonprofit organization for Mythic Arts that I ran for 22 years (starting in 1986), co-directed with author & folklorist Midori Snyder. The organization is currently on hiatus (while we catch our breaths and make a living), but a great deal of material from our Journal of Mythic Arts archive remains online.

Interstitial ArtsEllen Kushner, Delia Sherman, & other good folk look at writing and art in the interstices between genres. I was one of the founding board members, and remain an enthusiastic supporter.